This week we posted two new #LitBeat features on our Tumblr. In one piece, Greg Cwik roamed Brooklyn as part of The Morley Walk, a tour organized by Melville House’s Dustin Kurtz in order to bring attention to Christopher Morley’s The Haunted Bookshop. In another, Michael Spinelli reports on a conversation between Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and Sam Lipsyte.
Double Shot of #LitBeat
Secret Identity
Elena Ferrante’s introduction to the Folio edition of Sense and Sensibility is available at The Guardian. She describes the experience of reading Jane Austen as a girl. “At the time, I was enthralled by the great male adventure novels, with their stories that ranged all over the world, and I wanted to write such books myself: I couldn’t resign myself to the idea that women’s novels were domestic tales of love and marriage. I was past 20 when I returned to Austen. And from that moment not only did I love everything she had written but I was passionate about her anonymity.”
Through a Bell Darkly
As you may have heard, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Sylvia Plath. It also, not coincidentally, marks the release of two new biographies: American Isis (the first to draw material from the recently-opened Ted Hughes archive) and Mad Girl’s Love Song (which looks at the poet’s relationship with her “big, dark, hunky boy”). Emma Garman weighs the impact of all this new scholarship at Salon.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine on Representing Different Realities
Kali Fajardo-Anstine and Mieko Kawakami interviewed each other with the help of translators, discussing their books Sabrina & Corina and Breast and Eggs.
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Appearing Elsewhere
My piece in memory of novelist and rapier-tongued pundit Gore Vidal, who died Tuesday, appears on Prospero, the online arts & culture publication of The Economist.
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